It's time to stop monkeying around. Climate change is already happening, and we all know we need to make shifts in our personal lifestyle habits to attempt to stem the worst of its effects. Case in point: this week brings us a report from leading water scientists who have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population "may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages".

Many of us associate a diet that incorporates meat to be an essential part of a fulfilling life. How do we continue to enjoy our diet when meat is no longer available, or is prohibitively expensive? Well, it might simply require a shift in the way we think about dinnertime.

First, we need to jettison the idea of meat as the centre of the plate, which leads to a search for a "replacement". This is what has led us to all those dreadful meat analogs – think about all those dreadful hyper-processed soy patties and fake sausages. Not only are these products horrendously expensive (thus giving vegetarianism a reputation for being an indulgence for the wealthy), they just don't taste great. So forget all that.

Instead, let us abolish the idea of a "main dish" and dive into the wonderful world of a meal made up of several smaller dishes that compliment each other. Instead of a giant steak with watery green beans, how about green beans long-simmered in olive oil in the Italian tradition, which renders them silky and rich, topped with quickly sautéed onions and a sprinkle of smoked paprika, alongside a dish of stewed cannellini white beans with fat plum tomatoes threaded throughout, accompanying angel hair pasta with a quick garlic and oil sauce? This meal can be made in less than an hour, and the leftover beans can become the basis of a bean soup for tomorrow, with some of the leftover olive oil used for the green beans folded in for richness – with perhaps a purée of a root vegetable like sweet potatoes or carrots stirred in for depth. Add some fresh ground pepper, quality sea salt and a sprinkle of lemon juice, and lunch is on the table.

Another way to make a meat-free diet more palatable is to take comfort from the rest of the world's cuisines: there are meatless dietary traditions all around the world, and looking to them can help us understand how one's diet can be joyful and plentiful without animal flesh.

Particularly, we can look to what poor women from every corner of the globe have invented. Why? Because they have always created the tastiest dishes – so many of today's classic, beloved dishes originated from women who had to put food on the table for their families, no matter what. When kings and queens were busy dying from gout because of their overly rich diets, housewives in Sicily were making luscious caponata from aubergines and celery in a sweet and sour marinade; women in Oaxaca were wrapping corn dough around roasted chilies, seeds, and vegetables to make tamales filled with mole sauces; cooks in Egypt were frying onions in precious olive oil and topping their lentils and rice with them to make koshari; women in Africa were pounding peanuts to make rich stews laced with fresh greens and spices. Vegetarian dishes are everywhere, if we look.

There are also many naturally vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly cuisines that we can take inspiration from. The Japanese Buddhist temple cuisine called Shojin ryori has been free of all animal products for centuries, yet has created some of the most decadent and breathtaking dishes – many of which are adaptable for modern western kitchens. India, of course, has long traditions of meatless cuisines, and so do many Middle Eastern countries. For example, take the verdant vegetable salad spreads of Morocco: grated carrots scented with oranges; beetroot with cumin and cinnamon; squash with fresh parsley, fresh cilantro, fragrant with sweet paprika, all of them served with fresh and warm flatbread. Simple, everyday kind of food.

Throughout most of our history as eaters, meat has been scarce. This has left us with a rich global legacy of delicious naturally vegetarian dishes – there's no need to dust off 1970s brown rice-heavy cookery books to find vegetarian inspiration. The world itself can be a guide. Vegetarian cooking isn't difficult or pricey. It just asks for a different starting point than we're used to.